Role of built environment education curricula in post- disaster recovery management

This paper explains the rationale behind the European Commission funded EURASIA research project, emphasising the importance of the role of built and human education curricular in post-disaster recovery management. The project is an international collaboration between five European and Asian higher education institutions. This research specifically uses the post-tsunami recovery of Sri Lanka as a case study to identify the current gaps in built and human environment education, specifically related to post-disaster recovery management. The objective of this paper is to improve the academic rigour of the EURASIA research through presenting the justification of this research to a wider research community along with its proposed methodology and the expected outcomes

An exploration of the construction industry's role in disaster preparedness, response and recovery

The construction industry’s role in reconstruction activities following disasters such as the Indian Ocean Tsunami, is well documented. In particular, post-disaster reconstruction has been the subject of a significant body of research, with particular emphasis on developing countries that are less able to deal with the causes and impacts of disasters. There is, however, growing recognition that the construction industry has a much broader role to anticipate, assess, prevent, prepare, respond and recover from disruptive challenges. Advocates suggest construction professionals have a key role to play because they are involved in the construction of the infrastructure, and therefore should also be involved when an event destroys that infrastructure. They also suggest that the construction professions are in the best position to frame the discussion of the costbenefit trade-offs that occur in the risk management process; for example, the need for risk avoidance against the cost of implementing safety strategies. This exploratory paper considers the need for a more expansive view of the life cycle of infrastructure projects: one that extends beyond the traditional cycle of feasibility analysis, planning, design, construction, operation, maintenance and divestiture. This revised life cycle considers the construction professional’s ability to anticipate and respond to events, such as the Indian Ocean Tsunami, which damage or destroy an infrastructure project and reflects the construction industry’s ongoing responsibility toward an infrastructure’s users

The Capability of Spatial Analysis in Planning the Accessibility for Hazard Community from Debris-Flow Events

Debris flow is a destructive disaster causing tragic loss and damages to vulnerable people and their properties in many regions around the world. According an impact of this disaster, hazard areas are submerged in mud and debris causing enormous difficulties to all relevant organisations and affected people to access over the hazard community. Although an inaccessibility is one of the major problems considered to be solved in an urgent stage, the lack of a comprehensive study in activities of involved people through time line since the disaster occurrence causes a difficulty to plan the feasible solution to overcome those problems effectively. Therefore, this paper presents the existing knowledge in several activities related to accessibilities in hazard areas. Additionally, the initial findings derived from interviews conducted as a part of a doctoral research are determined showing real activities related to accessibilities in a study area of Thailand where was attacked by a major debris-flow event in 2001. Regarding the explored acitivities, this study aims to introduce a potential solution to overcome the inaccessibility problems in hazard areas by applying spatial analysis techniques. This solution presents a new method of an optimum balance between the explored problems from the interviews of affected people and the practices conducted by the local government to solve the inaccessibility in the hazard area. Some suggestions are addressed at the end of the paper to propose some additional practices with some considered factors for the spatial database design

Achieving success in collaborative research: the role of virtual research environments

Due to various challenges and opportunities such as globalisation of research agenda and advancements in information and communication technologies, research collaborations (both international and national) have become popular during the last decade more than ever before. Within this context, the concept of Virtual Research Environments is an emerging concept looking at addressing the complex challenges associated with conducting collaborative research. The research reported within this paper investigated how the success factors of collaborative research can be achieved by deploying a Virtual Research Environment

A capability maturity approach for construction process improvement: use of case studies approach

During the recent past, the effectiveness of process improvement strategies and the role of information technology have been discussed as a mechanism of achieving the performance improvements within the UK construction industry. However there are visible gaps within the current research status in process maturity and IT maturity studies in construction. This paper is based on an ongoing PhD research which is aiming at exploring the full potential of process capability and maturity approach and the role of IT as an enabler, as a method of improving the UK construction industry. In particular, this paper will concentrate on the methodological issues of the above study in justifying the applicability of the case study approach

EURASIA: developing a framework to create a joint disaster management curricular to enhance European and Asian higher education capacities

Poor response capacities related to public and commercial infrastructure and facilities management have been identified as a major inhibit for successful post tsunami recovery attempts in Sri Lanka. Lack of proper knowledge related to disaster management has been identified as a main attribute of the above poor response capacities. Being more specific, none of the Sri Lankan higher education institutions possess a curricular with the ability to produce disaster management expertise within the country. Addressing this issue, European and Asian Infrastructure Advantage (EURASIA) research project has been initiated which aims at developing a mechanism to develop a joint curriculum for Built Environment education through an international collaboration between five European and Asian Built Environment educational institutions. It is anticipated that this international collaboration will enhance the capacities of both the European and Asian partner institutions in their teaching, training and research activities in the Built Environment related disciplines

Post tsunami recovery capacity gaps in Sri Lanka

Poor response capacity has been identified as a major inhibitor for successful post tsunami recovery attempts in Sri Lanka. Despite level of incentives aid and help which have been received from the international communities, both governmental and nongovernmental organisations, have evidently failed to deliver expected levels of performance in post tsunami recovery activities. It is of utmost importance to identify and overcome the related capacity gaps if Sri Lanka is ever to recover from the December 2004 devastation and any future disasters. Within the light of this, as the first step towards recovery, the country must fully understand the nature and scale of its capacity gaps related to the post disaster recovery. Addressing this issue, the EURASIA (European and Asian Infrastructure Advantage) international collaborative research programme has conducted a series of interviews with key personnel in Sri Lanka to explore the nature and magnitude of this problem. The main objective of this paper is to present the outcome of these key expert interviews highlighting the priority attention areas and possible actions towards minimising the post tsunami recovery capacity gaps in Sri Lank

Place of technology management as a key process area within construction process improvement: A critical analysis

Process improvement has been identified as an important strategy to address the current unpredictability and under-achievements of the UK construction industry. Within the technological view of process improvement, information technology (IT) has been identified as a key enabler. Various studies about the information technology in construction have revealed that construction show a slow IT adoptability and IT has failed to convince the stakeholders of the construction industry. Within some of these researches, it has been argued that immature processes within the construction industry are responsible for this unsatisfactory level of performance of IT. On the other hand, it has also been argued that, Information Technology is a primary stimulant of process improvement, thus process maturity can be driven by the IT push. Leading to a dilemma, this indicates that new information technological innovations could use by immature organisations within their process improvement strategies. This dilemma triggered the necessity to evaluate the place of the Technology Change Management within the construction context. Thus, a literature survey was conducted to identify the construction process improvement initiatives and its relationship with the IT usage in construction with a special emphasis on the SPICE approach, which has provided the basis for this critical analysis. The SPICE is a five levelled framework based on the popular Software Capability Maturity Model (CMM), and presents an assessment tool for the maturity of construction process. However, within the CMM the Technology Change Management has been considered as a key process area within the fifth maturity level, indicating that this is a concern of matured organisations. However, the IT usage within construction shows that the immature construction organisations have successfully adopted IT in an ad-hoc manner with the aim of achieving short term benefits. On the other hand construction literature have criticised this ad-hoc IT usage and linked that to the relative slow IT adoptability in construction. This in effect challenges the allocation of a fixed place for Technology Change Management as a Key Process Area with the construction process improvement, from the organisation maturity point of view

Achieving higher capability maturity in construction process improvement

Process improvement has been identified as one of the potential mechanisms to achieve the desired performance improvements within the UK construction industry. In addition, it has further been recognised the importance of learning construction process improvement lessons from other industry examples. Software industry has exemplified a successful implementation of a process improvement strategy, based on the Capability Maturity Model (CMM) which evaluate the capabilities and maturities of organisations in concern to establish the next level of process improvements needed. This model consists of five maturity levels where level 1 being the least matured and level 5 being the most matured. After considering the close similarities between the software industry and the construction industry, the principles of software CMM were attempted to be applied within the construction industry, under the research project “Structured Process Improvement in Construction Enterprises (SPICE)”. Within this research the Key Process Areas (KPAs) of level 1, 2 and 3 of software CMM were evaluated and customised to the UK construction industry, after taking its unique characteristics into consideration. This leaves the software CMM level 4 and 5 KPAs unevaluated and un-customised, leaving the maximum potential of SPICE un-revealed. This paper aims at addressing this gap by reviewing the literature on construction process improvement and the software CMM to evaluate the applicability of software CMM higher capability maturity level KPAs within the UK construction context

Role of construction in managing disasters in developing economies

Recent large scale natural disasters such as Indian Ocean Tsunami of December 2004 reminded the world that the natural disasters can occur at any time any place and there are no “safe heavens” in the world. Moreover the devastation triggered through this natural disasters reminded us once again the strength of the link between the built environment and natural disasters. Despite the fact that the importance of the built environment and related disciplines towards successful post disaster recovery has been a significant body of research during the recent past (for example see: Karim 2004; Lizarralde and Boucher, 2004; Nikhileswarananda, 2004; Young, 2004) the recent natural disasters made the researchers and alike to review the existing body of knowledge related to post disaster recovery management and built environment as a matter of global importance and relevance